Micropolis is based on the original SimCity from Electronic Arts / Maxis, and designed and written by Will Wright. It is available for X Window System on Unix workstations.
I really like Micropolis, but it is not easy to play it by iPhone in the mobile computing age because of its original design. So I tried to created an iOS application 'CTMayor' to recall happy hours of the original SimCity.
I wrote fresh code on iOS platform to remake the original SimCity logic and user interactive concept. Most graphics, music, map and text materials come from public domain licensed by Creative Commons License or General Public License. The core data structure design is inspired by the Micropolis heavily.
Whether you take over an existing city or build your own, you are the Mayor and City Planner with complete authority.
Your city is populated by AI Citizens. Like their human counterparts, they build houses, condos, churches, stores and factories. And, also like humans, they complain about things like taxes, mayors, and city planners. If they get unhappy, they move out; you collect fewer taxes, the city deteriorates.
You can pick 'the city' and other scenarios when you start a new
game.
You can design, manage and maintain the city of your dreams from the beginning.
Your ideal place to live may be a bustling megalopolis, lots of people, lots of cars, tall buildings: high-energy, high density living. Or it may be a small rural community, or a linked group of small communities providing slow-paced country living.
As long as your city can provide places for people to live, work, shop and play, it will attract residents. And as long as traffic, pollution, overcrowding, crime or taxes don't drive them away, your city will live.
Each Scenario is a city which is either the victim of horrible planning or about to be the victim of a natural disaster. After you load in a Scenario, you will have a limited amount of time to correct or repair the problems.
If one strategy doesn't work, try another. There are a million stories in each city, and you write them.
The Rules are based on city planning and management, including:
Human Factors: Residential space and amenities, availability of jobs, and quality of life.
Economic Factors: Land value, industrial and commercial space, unemployment, internal and external markets, electric power, taxation, and funding for city services.
Survival Factors: Strategies for dealing with disasters, crime, and pollution.
Political Factors: Public opinion, zoning, and keeping residents and businesses satisfied with your city and your performance.
While every game is different, there's a basic strategy which most players follow, especially at the start of the game.
Plan: Mapping systems give physical and demographic overviews of the entire city.
Layout: Design living and working areas, road and transit systems, and recreational areas.
Zone: Set zoning boundaries for parks, residential, commercial and industrial areas.
Build: Place roads, rails, airports, seaports, fire and police stations, sports stadiums, and power plants.
Bulldoze: Clear forests for city growth, build landfill along waterways, clear and re-zone developed areas.
Manage: Using the mapping and graphing systems, gather up-to-date information on traffic density, population trends, power grid status, pollution, crime, land value, police and fire department efficiency, and cash flow. Set the tax rate and funding levels for city services.
But the most important strategy of all is practice. Test your plans and ideas as you watch the city grow or shrink through the immigration and emigration of industrious AI Citizens. Citizens will move in and build homes, hospitals, churches, stores and factories in the zones you provide, or move out in search of jobs or a better life elsewhere. The success of the city is based on the quality of the city you design and manage.
The main points to keep in mind while growing a city are:
Grow slowly. Watch your money.
All zones must be powered to develop.
Zones must be developed to generate tax money.
Roads or rails must provide access to and from each zone for it to fully develop.
There is a yearly maintenance cost for each section of road, rail, bridge and tunnel. This can add up. Don't build too many roads and rails and generate high maintenance costs before your city can generate enough tax revenues to support them.
Extra power plants and redundant power lines are expensive, but can keep zones from losing power during a disaster or emergency and deteriorating.
Rails can carry much more traffic than roads. While building and zoning an area that you predict will generate heavy traffic, install rails instead of roads in the early stages of development.
If you get a lot of heavy traffic warnings, replace roads with rails. You can build an entirely roadless city, even if you're not a train spotter!
Grouping zones together, four of five in a row touching each other, can eliminate a lot of power line segments.
Airports, seaports and stadiums won't help a small city grow -- so save your money until the city gets larger. The Sims will tell you when they need these things.
Place zones, roads, etc. carefully -- they cannot be moved, and you will have to pay to bulldoze them and rebuild.
As a rule of thumb, the number of residential zones should be approximately equal to the sum of commercial and industrial zones. When your city is small, you will need more industrial zones than commercial, and when your city gets larger, you will need more commercial zones than industrial.
Separate the residential areas from the industrial areas.
Keep in mind that proximity to downtown raises property values. The simulator defines the downtown areas as 'the center of mass of the population density.' It calculates the average geographical center of the population.
A bigger, more populous city is not necessarily better. Having a self-supporting, profitable city with pleasant surroundings is better than a huge city that is always broke and has no forest or shoreline.
Use the various maps and graphs to plan city growth, locate problems, and track your progress. Look for areas that need police and fire coverage as you go, so you don't have to go back and bulldoze developed zones to make room for police and fire stations.
Save your city to disk before trying any major new policy so you can go back if your plan doesn't work.
Check the Evaluation Page often. The citizens will let you know how you are doing. Also the statistics can be useful; if your population is shrinking, don't go zoning new areas that may never develop. Look for problems in the existing zoned areas, and spend your time and money solving them.
There are three types of terrain: Open Land, Trees, and Water.
Open Land is where you can zone and build. It is shown as brown with dark brown speckles.
Trees and Forests are shown as green, with dark green speckles. You cannot zone or build on trees. You may bulldoze trees and forests to turn them into clear land. While some bulldozing is necessary, clearing away too much green area will result in lower property values.
Water is shown as blue, with dark blue speckles. You cannot zone or build on water. You must bulldoze coastlines to create landfills before you can build or zone there
Clears trees and forests, creates landfill along the water, and levels developed, existing zones and clears rubble caused by disasters.
It costs $1 for each square tile bulldozed. Knocking down a 3x3 zone costs $9 since it's made up of nine tiles. You're automatically charged $1 for each non-empty tile that you Auto Bulldoze natural terrain, power lines and rubble.
Connect developed areas. Intersections and turns are automatically created. Be careful -- if you accidentally lay a road in the wrong place, you will have to pay for bulldozing and rebuilding.
Laying roads across water creates a bridge. Bridges can only be built in a straight line -- no curves, turns or intersections. Shorelines must be bulldozed prior to building a bridge.
Roadways are maintained by the transit budget, and wear out if there is a lack of funding. The amount of yearly funding requested by the transportation department is $1 for each section of road, $4 for each section of bridge.
It costs $10 to lay one section of road and $50 to lay one section of bridge.
Carry power from power plants to zoned land and between zones. All developed land needs power to function. Power is conducted through adjacent zones. Unpowered zones display the flashing lightning bolt symbol. There is a delay between the time you connect power to a zone and when the flashing symbol disappears. The delay grows longer as the city grows larger.
Power lines cannot cross zoned land. They can be built over trees, shrubbery, and shoreline only after bulldozing.
Junctions and corners are automatically created. Power lines across water must be horizontal or vertical -- no turn, curves or intersections. Power lines consume some power due to transmission inefficiencies.
It costs $5 to lay one section of power line on land, $25 on water.
Create a railway system for intra-city mass transit. Place tracks in heavy traffic areas to help alleviate congestion.
Intersections and turns are created automatically. Tracks laid under rivers will appear as dashed lines. These are underwater tunnels, and must be vertical or horizontal -- no turns, curves or intersections.
Transit lines are maintained by the transit budget. The level of funding affects the efficiency of the system. The amount of yearly funding requested by the transportation department is $4 for each section of rail, and $10 for each section of tunnel.
It costs $20 per section of track laid on land, $100 per section under water.
Can be placed on clear land. Parks, like forests and water, raise the land value of surrounding zones. Parks can be bulldozed as fire breaks or reserve space for later mass transit expansion.
It costs $10 to zone one park.
Where the citizens live, build houses, apartments and community facilitieslike hospitals and churches.
Most residential zones develop into one of four classes: lower, middle, upper, and high. They can range in population density from single-family homes to high-rise apartments and condominiums. Some residential zones will automatically develop into churches and hospitals.
Factors influencing residential value and growth are pollution, traffic density, population density, surrounding terrain, roadway access, parks and utilities.
It costs $100 to zone one plot of land as residential.
Used for many things, including retail stores, office buildings, parking garages and gas stations.
There are four values for commercial property, and five levels of growth, from the small general store to tall skyscrapers. Factors influencing the value and growth of commercial areas include internal markets, pollution, traffic density, residential access, labor supply, airports, crime rates, transit access and utilities.
It costs $100 to zone one plot of land as commercial.
For heavy manufacturing and industrial services. There are four levels of industrial growth, from small pumping stations and warehouses to large factories.
Factors influencing industrial growth are external markets, seaports, transit access, residential access, labor supply and utilities.
It costs $100 to zone one plot of land as industrial.
Lower the crime rate in the surrounding area.
This in turn raises property values. Place these in high-density crime areas, as defined by your Crime Rate Map. The efficiency of a station depends on the level of police department funding and transit access.
It costs $500 to build a police station. Full yearly maintenance of each Police Station is $100.
Make surrounding areas less susceptible to fires.
When fires do occur, they are put out sooner and do less damage if a station is near. The effectiveness of fire containment depends on the level of fire department funding and transit access.
It costs $500 to build a fire station. Full yearly maintenance of each fire station is $100.
Encourage residential growth, once a city has become fairly large. You may build a stadium in a smaller city without negative (or positive) effect. Stadiums indirectly generate a lot of revenue, but create a lot of traffic. Properly maintaining a stadium requires a good road and transit network.
It costs $3000 to build a stadium.
Can be Coal or Nuclear.
The nuclear plant is more powerful but carries a slight risk of meltdown. The coal plant is less expensive, but less powerful and it pollutes.
All zoned land needs power to develop and grow. When developed land loses power, it will degenerate to an undeveloped zone unless power is restored. Connecting too many zones to a power plant causes brownouts.
Coal power plants cost $3000 to build, and supply enough energy for about 50 zones. Nuclear power plants cost $5000 and supply electricity for about 150 zones.
Increase the potential for industrial growth. They have little effect in a small city, but contribute a lot to industrialization in a large city.
Seaports should be placed on a shoreline. The shoreline must be bulldozed prior to zoning a Seaport. Once the port is operational you may see ships in the water.
It costs $5000 to zone land for use as a seaport.
Increase the growth potential of your commercial markets. Once a city starts getting large, commercial growth will level off without an airport. Airports are large and expensive and should not be built unless your city can afford one. Position airports to keep flight paths over water whenever possible, lessening the impact of air disasters.
Once you build an airport you will see planes flying above your city to and from the airport. There is also a traffic helicopter that alerts you to heavy traffic areas.
It costs $10,000 to zone land for use as an airport.
To begin a city, we need: places for citizens to live, places for citizens to work, and power.
Select the Residential tool, then scoll the map to find the terrain you want to build a residential zone. Tap in the map to place the first residential zone. The 'R' in the zone center indicates that it is a Residential Zone. The flashing lightning symbol means that the zone has no power. Place a few more Residential Zones next to the first one.
Now decide where to position a Power Plant in your city. Select the Power Plant tool, a Coal or Nuclear plant. Place the Power Plant in some open space near your Residential Zones. If your Power Plant is not directly adjacent to a Residential Zone, you'll need to run a Power Line from your Power Plant to the Residential Zones.
To do this, select the Power Line Tool. Then tap to lay Power Lines from your Power Plant to your Residential Zones. Adjacent Power Line sections will automatically connect to each other. Road and Rail lines connect in the same manner.
In a moment, the flashing symbols in the Residential Zones will disappear, indicating that your zones have been powered. Any zones that are adjacent to a powered zone do not need separate Power Lines run to them. Soon you will see small houses start to appear. The citizens have started to move in!
Once there are a few Residential Zones, where citizens can live, you need to make it possible for your new residents to find jobs. They can't all work at the power plant!
Now you're ready for Commercial and Industrial areas; places for citizens to work, shop, and transact business. Select the Commercial tool and place a few Commercial Zones near your Residential ones. Then select the Industrial Icon and place some Industrial Zones. Connect all necessary Power Lines.
Notice that as you select different Tool Icons, the icon's description and its associated cost will be displayed in the Tool Cost field near the lower left corner. The Current Funds field near the tool cost field displays your total funds available.
Now select Road tool and add Roads from your Residential housing to the Commercial and Industrial areas to allow the citizens to commute to work. Road sections connect themselves like Power Line sections. Once you have Roads, traffic will be generated.
When your first taxes are collected in a new city, and each year after, the Budget Adjusting Page will appear.
You will be asked to set the funding levels for the fire, police, and transportation departments, and to set the property tax rate.
You can raise and lower the tax rate and budget levels by dragging the sliders corresponding to each category.
Tapping the year area in the status bar, you can view the final budget report of this year if it is ready, but you can not change property tax rate and the funding levels from the Budget Report Page.
The maximum tax rate you can set is 20%.
The minimum tax rate you can set is 0%.
The optimum tax rate for fast growth is between 5%1$ and 7%2$.
To slow city growth without actually shrinking, set the tax rate to 8%1$ or 9%2$.
The amount of yearly funding requested for the fire and police departments is $100 per station that you have placed. Until you actually build fire or police stations, you cannot fund them. You cannot allocate more than 100% of the requested funding for fire and police departments. Allocating less than the requested amount will decrease the effective coverage of the police or fire stations.
The amount of yearly funding requested for the transportation department is $1 for each section of road, $4 for each section of bridge (roads over water), $4 for each section of rail, and $10 for each section of tunnel (underwater rails). You cannot allocate more than 100% of the requested funds.
Transportation maintenance funding slightly below 100%1$ will cause slow, minor deterioration of the transit system -- an occasional pothole or bad track section. Funding between 90%2$ and 75%3$ will cause noticeable damage -- many sections of road and rail will be unusable. Funding below 75%4$ will cause rapid deterioration of your transit system.
CashFlow = TaxesCollected - TotalAllocatedFunds
Tapping the city name area in the status bar, the Map Page shows the entire area of your city.
Try the different map views by selecting from the following types: Power grid, Population density, Traffic density, Pollution density, Crime rate, Fire protection, Police protection, Land value and Rate of growth.
You will need this information to build and adjust conditions in your city. For example, you can pinpoint the areas with the highest crime to determine locations for new police stations.
Tapping in the small map view will quit the map view mode, and scroll the main map to the location you tapped.
The Map Page should be constantly referred to in all stages of city planning, building and managing.
Where you want your city center.
Where you want the high-class waterfront residential areas.
Where you will cross water with bridges, power lines and tunnels.
Where to place power plants.
Where to place large industrial sections away from the residential sections.
The general layout of your city.
Use the map to guide your city's growth around forest areas, to preserve the trees and improve property values.
Use the Traffic Density map to plan traffic control and expansion.
Use the Pollution Map to detect problem areas, and disperse the industrial zones and/or replace roads with rails.
Use the Power Grid Map to locate zones that have lost power.
Use the City Services Maps to evaluate the effective coverage of your police and fire departments.
Use the Crime Rate Map to locate problem areas that need more police protection.
Use the Pollution Map to locate problem areas.
Use the Traffic Density Maps to determine where to replace roads with rails.
Use the Land Value Map to locate depressed areas for improvement or replacement.
Tapping the rating area in the status bar, you can view the public opinion and statistics of the city.
Public Opinion is presented in poll form, rating your overall job as Mayor and listing what the public regards as the city's most pressing problems. You are advised to keep your residents happy or they might migrate away, and you will be left with a 'ghost town.'
In general, if more than 55% of the populace thinks you are doing a good job, then you can feel secure of keeping your job.
If 10% or less of the people think something is a problem, then it's not too bad.
Traffic -- Replace dense sections of roads with rails.
Crime -- Add police stations and/or raise property values.
Pollution -- Replace roads with rails, disperse industrial zones.
Housing Costs -- Zone more residences in low property value areas.
Fires -- Build more fire departments.
Taxes -- Lower taxes (if you can).
Unemployment -- Zone more commercial and industrial areas.
Population is the number of residents in your city.
The Net Migration statistic provides a rating of the desirability of your city. If people are leaving in droves, then you know something is rotten.
The Assessed Value is the combined value of all city-owned property: roads, rails, power plants, police and fire stations, airports, seaports, parks, etc. It does not include residential, commercial and industrial zones.
Village: 0 to 1,999
Town: 2,000 to 9,999
City: 10,000 to 49,999
Capital: 50,000 to 99,999
Metropolis: 100,000 to 499,999
Megalopolis: 500,000 and above
Major Factors: Crime, pollution, housing costs, taxes, traffic, unemployment, fire protection, unpowered zones, city growth rate.
Minor Factors: Stadium needed (but not built), seaport needed (but not built), airport needed (but not built), road funding, police funding, fire department funding, and fires.
A large population is not necessarily a sign of a successful city. Population size does not affect the overall city score, since low population could indicate a new or growing city.
Since city growth rate does affect the overall city score, a city in which growth has been intentionally stopped for environmental or aesthetic reasons will have a slightly lower score.
Tapping the RCI graph area in the status bar, additional information can be gained through the available Graphs.
Unlike maps, which only show the current state of your city, the Graphs give you a record of the past so you can gauge trends and cycles.
You can toggle between 10 year and 120 year graphs, by tapping the right top of the Graph page.
The Graphs give information on many of the same factors as the maps, but show the information over time. Graphs are for locating trends in city life that won't be noticeable in a map. If you look at a map, for example the Crime Rate Map, a very slight rise in the crime rate will not be noticeable. But on the Crime Rate Graph, you would easily locate the upward trend in crime because you will be viewing the levels for a number of years at the same time.
\
The Residential Population Graph shows the total population in residential zones.
The Commercial Population Graph shows the total population in commercial zones.
The Industrial Population Graph shows the total population in industrial zones.
The Cash Flow Graph shows your city's cash flow: money collected in taxes minus money it took to maintain your city. The center of the Cash Flow Graph represents a cash flow of zero. Do not build more infrastructure (roads, rails, police departments, fire stations) than you can support with tax revenues.
The Crime Rate Graph shows the overall crime rate of the entire city.
The Pollution Graph shows the overall average pollution reading of the entire city.
Tapping the clock area in the status bar, you can adjust the game speed.
Fast
Normal
Slow
Pause
Disasters will randomly occur as you play. At higher game levels the disasters will happen more often.
Shipwrecks can occur once you have an operating seaport.
They can cause fires where the ship crashes into a shore or bridge.
Monster Attacks are provoked by high levels of pollution.
A monster destroys everything in its path, starts fires, and causes planes, helicopters, trains, and ships to crash.
Fires can start anywhere in the city.
Fires spread fairly rapidly through forests and buildings, somewhat slower over roadways. Fire will not cross water or clear land.
The effectiveness of the fire department (which can be viewed in the Map Page) is based on how close it is to the fire, its funding level, and its transit access. Fires inside this effective radius will be extinguished automatically.
If you have no operational fire departments in the area you can try to control the fire yourself. Since fire will not spread across clear terrain, you can build fire breaks with the bulldozer. Just surround the fire with clear areas and it will stop spreading and eventually burn itself out. You cannot directly bulldoze a fire.
Meltdowns are only possible if you are using a nuclear power plant.
If a meltdown occurs, your nuclear plant will explode into flames.
The surrounding area will be unusable for the remainder of the simulation due to radioactive contamination.
Tornados can occur anywhere on the map at any time.
Very fast and unpredictable, they can appear and disappear at a moment's notice.
Tornados destroy everything in their path, and can cause planes, helicopters, trains, and ships to crash.
Earthquakes are the most devastating disaster. This is a Major earthquake -- between 8.0 and 9.0 on the Richter Scale.
It will destroy buildings and start fires.
The initial damage will vary with the severity of the earthquake, and the eventual fire damage depends on your fire-control efforts.
When it stops you will have to take charge and control the scattered fires. Use the bulldozer to contain the largest fires first and work your way down to the smaller ones.